In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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Yep. I find this weird double standard applied to TheMotte and other rationalist adjacent spaces when they go off on a particular chain of reasoning and reach a 'wrong' (or, at least, flawed) conclusion about some facet of the world that they're not an 'expert' in. Maybe there's an expert consensus that contradicts their conclusion or maybe the person in question didn't do quite enough research on the question and missed some obvious step.
And this gets jumped on by the critics as proof that the entire space is filled with deluded halfwits who have too high an opinion of their own intellect and should really just stay in their lane.
As always, i ask "compared to what?" Let's even leave aside the dregs of the internet where flame wars are all that exist, you can't find other places where someone would even follow a given chain of reasoning to a logical conclusion, explaining their steps in such a way that they're open to critique!
Making these sorts of mistakes is generally considered how one learns and improves their understanding of the world. If you are open to, and indeed, asking for critique and correction then you're already better off than 90% of the people contributing their opinions to the internet.
So critics who jump on errors in reasoning or faulty understanding of the world as displayed on TheMotte should really show me where I can go to find people reaching 100% factually correct and logical conclusions on their first try and with fully open descriptions of their reasoning process.
Before, I'd have believed "Academia" but, uh, the replication crisis and similar factors have shown that this doesn't really apply there, except in maybe the most rigorous fields and we have reason to be concerned about them too.
Absent that, I must conclude that being overly critical of these spaces whilst ignoring how high the standards are compared to the internet at large is just an attempt at social policing, and thus worth ignoring.
It really is a shame how far academia has fallen. Hopefully it hasn't always been this way. In my opinion one of the largest things that separates the rationalist sphere from everyday intellectuals is willingness to question academia and a rejection of Scientism.
Unfortunately most of the intelligenstia seems to have been captured by the idea that Science is the end all be all, and if something is in a scientific publication it is correct, full stop. Many people abuse this rhetorical tactic assuming nobody will read the sources, which in most spheres is largely true.
Our #1 competitive advantage in my mind is the ability to seriously question the academic class.
Bingo. For better or worse (probs worse) mainstream culture treats universities and academic researchers as brilliant, untouchable geniuses spitting out revolutionary research on a regular basis, such that one should just accept their vision without question.
Meanwhile some rat-adjacent groups are like "I dunno man, this low powered study with n=250 composed mostly of affluent college students might not be completely representative of the real world, and we've seen this idea implemented in practice and it doesn't seem to work very well.
And academia is so ossified it takes years for it to respond to critiques. Communities that have healthy norms for updating beliefs as new information come in are going to be ahead of the curve in general.
I think the bigger difference is willing to engage with what makes good or bad science. Scientism, as you call it, just get religious again "believe the Science" (with a capital 'S') but only if it's things I agree with and a study I support, not if it's, e.g. personality differences between men and women, or ... just about anything to do with Covid...
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